Hi Everyone! It's been a while since I've come to the message board. Lots of things have been happening. My youngest is in Kindergarten this year! That means half days and makes for busy days! Next year when they are both in school full time I will not be running to catch busses so often.

January 12th I ended up in the ER with severe stomach pains. I have an extremely high pain tolerance so when the pain sent me to the floor in tears Bryan called 911 and I went to the hospital by ambulance. Fortunately my in-laws live close by and they were able to come watch the boys so Bryan could come to the hospital.

It turned out I have a few small gallstones, but the pain was from acute pneumonia and an umbilical hernia! I was admitted to the hospital for IV antibiotics for the pneumonia and once I'm completely over that I will be make an appointment with a surgeon to discuss the hernia and possible operation for that.

I do have gallstones, but the gallbladder is not inflamed or irritated at all so my doctor said with a healthy and low fat diet I might not need to have it removed. The doctors determined that the type of pain I was having was not a gallbladder attack.

I am feeling a lot better now and will have an x-Ray next week to be sure the pneumonia is comely cleared. My strength is almost comely back and I'm not going back to bed for a few hours every day after putting the boys on the bus in the morning.

For those of you who are friends with me on Facebook, thank you for your thoughts and prayers as I've been going through this.

Hopefully that is the end of the health issues. Glad to see that you are posting again. February is usually the time of the year that I really start counting down the days until the beach trip. I've noticed that Myrtle Beach is starting to become a more frequent topic in the conversations with the family over the last few weeks. I think a lot of people start to really get tired of winter this time of year, and start thinking about warm and sunny days that are not long away.

Well it's been 3 months since my hospital stay and I'm doing really well! No more pain at all and I'm doing well on my healthy eating plan. I've lost 13 pounds just with that switch.

After talking to my mom and then my doctor, I will not be having surgery for the umbilical hernia. It's quite tiny and my mom has the same thing and has lived with it without any issues whatsoever for 37 years. She saw the x-Ray and mine is identical to hers. The risks of surgery far outweigh this tiny hernia. I've been doing special exercises to strengthen the muscles without causing further damage to the hernia (traditional ab exercises are a NOcwith this) and it could even correct the problem entirely.